


Suspension

by gogollescent



Category: Imperial Radch Series - Ann Leckie
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-09
Updated: 2015-05-09
Packaged: 2018-03-29 18:54:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3906982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gogollescent/pseuds/gogollescent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For the prompt, "<em>Justice of Toren</em> One Esk, sensual." Interpreted loosely.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Suspension

People on kef wrote nonsense. No emotion meant—no compass rose of relevance. No priorities by which to steer the sinking craft.

It was a disappointment to some. A bad disappointment. Probably. But then, Seivarden had never really concerned herself with the cult of pure reason, before or after Garsedd. Leave _reason_ to those families who ruled from inside the Radch, under a flock of hammered-metal skies. Leave it to the servants’ daughters, who had to scrabble for a foothold. She turned to kef because, as she’d told Breq, she was alone—the new millennium cared nothing for her, and she wished to return that kindness. She wished to be more self-contained and secret than a stone.

She had a dream, later. When dreams came back. In it Breq stood before her, naked and shiningly wet, shaved head as bright as though crowned with one of those ancient external implants—things you saw in museums or in your ancestor’s glass-walled tomb: where your mother took you, when you were eight, to kiss the holo effigy. Silver frames that wrapped around the skull. Breq wore light as though it had a tail deep inside her; as though light’s roots plunged in to teach and organize her thought. It was perhaps something to do with One Esk’s hoard of music. In this dream, Breq’s skin was listening. 

Where was Seivarden? 

Somewhere cold.

She also had a fantasy, which was no more voluntary or extensive than the nightmare. She imagined Breq beating her as she had beaten her in Strigan’s house. Only this time, Seivarden stayed awake for it—for a while. Breq didn’t start with the face. Breq kicked her in the stomach, then grabbed her and slapped her. Threw her on her side against the wall. 

Then she would begin to black out. It was as though the fantasy was corrupted by the memory, despite itself, what she assumed was its purpose. She fell against the wall and blood trickled in a slug from her nose. It smelled sharp. Breq’s hand tightened on her shoulder. Her vision failed, or seemed to fail—blackness hazing over the world, checkerboarding naked space. Strigan’s awful furniture dressed in a mantilla veil. 

Was this so different from a drugged stupor? Was this not numbness, this encroaching dark? She could still feel, it was true. It was all very painful—those early days together. But a dim pain, drawn-out and useless. Not a sharp white instrument to bore a window in her head. It was damage separated from her core by velvet layers of stuff. And how she clung to it! Came back to it, in her bunk on the _Mercy of Kalr_ , and woke up hard! She was swaddled then, as well, though in comfort and in peace rather than late-stage withdrawal—on her back among the cushions, arms made tedious by sleep—and the pressure was there, the hot tight yearning: and it was not more urgent than the water-warm cup of the bed. So what did anyone feel, really, at any time? Just a pattern of stirrings, stretched above a body-deep gulf. But she took some comfort from the violence. Hallucinated, dilatory teetering on the brink of true oblivion: nasty bruises, for the bridge at her feet—and behind her, wind and void.


End file.
